Newbie Questions On Corks, etc. ?

Hello,

New to wines, but trying to learn.

I've read that wine bottles should always be stored horizontally. I guess that this is to keep the cork (if a natural cork) always wet. a. Are there other reasons also ?

b. What about if the bottle came with a plastic cork substitute ? Horiz. still desireable ?

And,

c. Once opened, and the natural cork is replaced by one of those plastic cam-expansion caps, is it still necessary or desireable to store the bottle horizontally ?

Why ?

Thanks, Bob

Reply to
Robert11
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No.

The reason to keep the cork wet is so it doesn't shrink and let in oxygen. For a few years or less it would not make much difference.

Doesn't really matter. Bottles with plastic corks shouldn't be kept long anyway. With time they lose their elasticity and let ari in, and usually bottles with plastic corks would not improve with age much anyway.

Doesn't matter with screwcaps either, but some screwcapped wine will keep for several/many years. Depends on the screwcap lining. And the wine of course.

I don't know what those caps are like, but I usually store wine upright in the fridge once opened if possible.. Probably doesn;t make much diference - usually you shoudl not keep wine very long (more than a couple of days) once opened anyway.

Reply to
Steve Slatcher

Actually, if you do it right, wine can be stored in the fridge for weeks, maybe even months, with little or no adverse effect. The key is to make sure there is no oxygen, and none gets in.

What I do (with very good success) is rebottle the remainder in smaller bottles, so that there is almost no ullage (filled almost to the brim). I stick a paper clip in the neck and put the cork back (the paper clip forces a passage for air to escape). Then I pull the paper clip out and push the cork in a little more (past the nick). There should only be half an inch or less of air space ("ullage").

I've stored wine for up to two months that way in the fridge with little or no adverse effect.

Another technique I use is to completely fill a mini-screwcap bottle (the kind you get in a sixpack of cheap wine) with the leftover, and screw the cap back on. There's no air except what the wine absorbed during the pour. This also works very well.

There's a FAQ entry on this, btw, but the FAQ is temporarily down. (you could google the archives of the newsgroup - skip the "miniFAQ as that's just a table of contents).

(I'd be interested in other people's success with these, and other, methods).

Jose

Reply to
Jose

"Jose" wrote

Thanks for sharing this; I'd never considered re-using these smaller bottles, I usually just toss them in recycling. I might have assumed those screwcaps weren't terrible good at sealing the bottle.I would presume there's no particular reason to store these in a particular orientation, upright or sideways?

Colin

Reply to
Colin William

The reason to store wine bottles sideways does not exist with screwcaps. I store them upright, filled to the brim. I only have one of these which I keep reusing; it's been a over year and still seals fine. (The other quarter bottles and half bottles I have are corked; I store these upright too because for the short amount of time they remain in the fridge, the cork won't dry out (so far two months has been the longest I've kept a split, a week is more typical).

Jose

Reply to
Jose

Jose wrote: > The reason to store wine bottles sideways does not exist with screwcaps.

OK for vertical storage, same here, but you cannot have them filled to the brim, the expansion with heat will cause the closure to leak much as the corks would have been pushed out. You still need an expansion space.

Reply to
Mike Tommasi

Never thought of that. But haven't had a problem, perhaps because I keep them in the fridge, where temperature is pretty constant (and so far, I've only used screwcaps for whites, which are rebottled at fridge temperature).

Anybody know the coefficient of expansion for wine?

Jose

Reply to
Jose

Bottle glass has a coefficient of volume expansion around 20 x 10^-6

1/C°. Alcohol is around 750 x 10^-6 1/C°.

Water is a bit funny as it expands both above and below 4°C but curves are readily available on the net. At 4°C density is 1.0000 g/ml, at 40°C it is 0.9922 g/ml.

Assume we have exactly 750ml of wine with 13% alcohol by volume at 4°C, this means 97.5 ml of alcohol and 652.5 ml of water. By bringing it from

4°C to 40°C:

- the glass expands by 20 x 10^-6 1/C° x 750 ml x (40-4)°C = 0.54 ml

- the alcohol expands by 750 x 10^-6 1/C° x 97.5ml x (40-4)°C = 2.63 ml

- the water expands by (1/0.9922 - 1.0000)ml/g x 652.5g = 5.13 ml

Net effect is an "overflow" of 5.13 + 2.63 - 0.54 = 7.22 ml.

With a standard neck diameter of 1.85cm, this means the liquid will push up the neck by 2.67 cm, just over an inch. Much more if it is a high octane zin :-)

Now if you fill to the rim, something will have to give to accomodate the extra 7ml of wine, either the bottle will explode or the Stelvin closure will leak.

Note how the alcohol is a significant contributor to expansion. If you did the same example with 40% whiskey, the expansion would be 11 ml, or

4cm up the neck. This may explain why most liquor bottles, while having the same diameter at the cork, are much wider just below the cork, they seem to have a kind of bulge for better expansion capability.
Reply to
Mike Tommasi

Really? I know expansion occurs (that's what they taught me in science school) but that much? So I did an experiment. I took a regular 750, filled it to the brim with industrial grade hydrogen hydroxide, at 103 degrees F (more or less), and corked it up tight (using my usual split method of using a wire to let the air out). Then I stuck in the fridge overnight. The level had dropped a good half to three quarters of an inch. Wow!

Well, maybe that's just trapped gasses making its way slowly to the surface, so I put the bottle in the sun and summer air for a few hours, and the level rose halfway or more to the original level.

Making allowances for the fact that I was using a degenerate form of alcohol, rather than a carbonated one, and for the imprecision in my work, I'm convinced.

Funny how the real world works.

I still maintain however that if you start with cool wine, and keep it in the cooler, that the expansion due to temperature changes will not be much, since the temperature change will not be much.

And... if you leave no ullage when you cork up a room temperature wine in a smaller bottle and put it in the fridge, all that will happen is that as the wine contracts, air may be drawn in which would have otherwise been trapped by the ullage. So no loss there either.

Jose

Reply to
Jose

You would have to fill to the rim at the highest temperature that you want the bottle to tolerate. Which means heating it up (bottle and wine) to that high temperature. Not good.

If your use room temperature and then store in fridge, but the fridge breals down in august, you have a mess...

Reply to
Mike Tommasi

A small mess. A reasonable risk for short term storage of half and quarter bottles intended to be drunk within the month or so. Somewhat less than ideal for long term storage... but then I'm not refilling bottles for long term storage!

Jose

Reply to
Jose

I understand, you were talking about filling bottles from wine you buy in bulk. Honestly, for such short term wine, I find boxes to be the best solution. 5 litres and no oxygen all the way down to the last drop.

Reply to
Mike Tommasi

I agree of course. Although there's lots of good wine (most domaines provide a BiB option now) available in box here in France, in the US its largely restricted to plonk, or at best very low end quaffers.

-E

Reply to
Emery Davis

Not only in the US. Can't speak for the rest of Europe, but for Austria and Germany that's exactly the case.

M.

Reply to
Michael Pronay

I assume you both agree that it is a good way to sell everyday wines of really good quality.

Reply to
Mike Tommasi

I assume you both agree that it is a good way to sell everyday wines of really good quality.

Reply to
Mike Tommasi

Feh! Phtooey! Ick!

(Pass me a Bud please - I need to rinse my mouth!)

No, I was talking about opening a 750ml bottle of a nice wine, and as I'm the only one that drinks, finding a way to preserve the rest of the bottle from the ravages of oxygen while it awaits its next turn at my palate.

I open a 750, pour half into a 375, half of the remainder into a 185, pop the rebottles in the fridge and drink the rest. Minimum ullage means minimum oxygen, and if it's an already-chilled white I'm doing this to, there should be no problem (and in fact, I have had no problems). If it's a room temperature red that I am preserving this way, the wine shrinks and the air that gets in is still less than what I might trap leaving ullage. So far the only messes I've had have been drips due to bad pouring technique.

As for box wines... how good is the box (and the plastic inside) at housing wine over the long term? (Would you cellar a box of nice wine, if such a thing existed?) I imagine the plastic bag is not as unreactive as glass.

Jose

Reply to
Jose
Reply to
Michael Pronay

See my other posting.

M.

Reply to
Michael Pronay

That's fine for a wine I'm buying for now, but not for something I may lay down. I'd be interested in side by side tastings of fifteen month old wine stored in glass vs box.

"Has this wine been aged?" "I don't know... what time is it?"

Jose

Reply to
Jose

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